Suppression

Beauty, art and music

Category: Actions

Type

Voluntary

Introduction and description

If you look at the Model of the Mind, you will see that the Conscious mind comes diagramatically between the Subconscious and the Higher spirit. It also however, comes literally between the two, acting like a block on spiritual experience

The Subconscious is the gateway to the Higher spirit whereas the functions and data of the Conscious mind – Memory, the Objectives, the Personality, all serve to get in the way . Look at the diagram and you will see no direct connection between the Conscious mind and the Higher spirit. The Composer communicates to us through our Perceptions, not our Memory.

So we have to go through the Subconscious to get to the Composer.

The major block to spiritual experience is our intellect – Reason and Memory and Learning. And where do these Functions reside? They reside in the left brain – see Brain split.

So one way to still the intellect is to use the right brain instead of the left brain and what Functions reside in the right brain?

So what we need to do is immerse ourselves in things that please and activate the right brain a bit more.

Background

The right brain is known as our feminine side, the left brain is our masculine side. This classification is true whether we are male or female. Thus whenever I am pounding away at my computer organising, rationalising and classifying [as I am wont to do] I am using my masculine side. But when I listen to Bruch’s violin concerto and paint, [as I am also wont to do] I am using my feminine side.

In early thought – philosophers and poets and religious thinkers often gave the feminine side a female name – one of which was ‘the Sophia’.

Sophia according to the Gnostic Ptolemaeus, in his letter to Flora, is the intermediate between us and the spiritual world at large.

For the 17^th century mystics Jakob Boehme and George Cichtel, Sophia was far more active in primordial man, but she abandoned him once he acquired Reason, and man ‘cannot be saved until he finds her again’! This idea was taken up by the Catharists; it also colours Romantic thought (as in Novalis, Holderlin, Edgar Allen Poe, and Wagner).

The use of Beauty, Art and Music as the means of achieving balance was also heavily supported by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Finally it is in the I Ching and known as XIAO XU.

Method

Do things that are ‘artistic’

Simply start doing all the things the Subconscious or feminine side is good at, if you let it. All the creative and imaginative things that use symbols and play, laughter and fun. The objective is not to produce masterpieces you can sell, but to have fun. Here are some suggestions:

Have a go at Painting, sculpture, pottery and drawing, origami, flower arranging, collage
Bake bread. Make fresh coffee and let the smell ooze round the house. Make cakes and hearty warming stews.
Start making photo collages, or even computer collages and albums of all the

wonderful people and events that happened in your life, the things and people who gave joy and happiness. Put plenty of photos of those you love and your family all over the house. Fill the walls with pictures. Forget the wallpaper – make your own!
Write poems
Write stories – romantic stories, adventure stories – let yourself go
Play an instrument, use the instrument and improvise
Take up Gardening, design your garden, grow your own vegetables, arrange your own flowers
Revel in Clothes – choosing clothes, wearing clothes, making your own clothes. All are artistic pursuits, as clothes are a form of artistic expression
Learn how to cook and cook as often as you can – proper meals. Nothing formal, experiment, have fun. My Mum and I used to make pastry and throw it onto the ceiling so that it would drop onto Dad when he was having his tea in the kitchen. This was FUN. We laughed my Mum and I. I suppose it isn’t really cooking but we had to make the pastry first. My brother used to make pastry too and we used his jam tarts to knock balls off bricks in the garden [a good game]
Try face painting. This is enormous fun. I did it as a child with a friend called Barbara. My father once said I looked like some tart from a brothel when I came home because it was a bit difficult to get off, but there you go, annoying fathers is fun too.
Decorate your house so that it is beautiful. If you are not by nature a very artistic person then at least find someone to do it for you according to what you find beautiful
Play games – nothing competitive, this simply adds a threat and is a feature of the Intellect. Play daft fun games, make sand castles, or play silly guessing games
Play with your dog – tug, catch the ball, hunt the slipper, hunt the bone, find the flea, chase, tummy rub [you and him]. Cuddle him.

And do all this frequently, daily if possible, to reinforce the ideas and get the child active.

Involve’ magic’

The use of puns, symbols, multiple meanings, silly jokes, trailing sentences, rhyme, and magic and secrets, all appeal to the right brain.

Hypnotic Realities – Milton Erickson

And I want you to know
that in each person's life
there are things
we like and don't want to know about
it would spoil the magician's art if you knew
how he did that trick
how did he get the rabbit out of the hat?
Of course, there is some kind of explanation
but you would rather enjoy having him perform
than know how he did it
all magicians keep their own special secrets
and they respect each other's secrets
and another thing all patients
should keep in mind
adults are only children grown tall

Fantasise

Don’t hold back use your imagination and really go to town; imagine yourself in wonderful places and doing amazing things. Walter Mitty gone mad.

Use the terminology of childhood

Or don’t use big words and long sentences! Try to adapt the way you think and speak to make it simpler.

Also use the terminology of childhood to try to make yourself feel you are a child again - being looked after by kindly parents and relatives. Even if you had a horrendous childhood, the terminology of the safe home and loving parents still works, perhaps more so because you may never have known them, but longed for them. Use words like ‘love’ and ‘safe’, ‘warm’ and ‘cosy’, ‘nice’, childish words – gooey, squidgy, mushy – lots of words ending with ‘y’ but positive.

Milton Erickson both encouraged the use of childlike behaviour – games, play – to get people into a childlike and therefore receptive state, but also assessed a person's state of trance by judging how childlike the language they used was. Here is Erickson talking about one of his subjects.....

Hypnotic Realities – Milton Erickson

She has a master's degree and yet here she is using juvenile language. Hypnotic subjects regress to simpler forms of thinking, feeling and behaviour. Simpler, more youthful, less complicated forms.

I find the word 'regress' a little negative here for what occurs, because very often the so called childlike description is easier to understand, less pompous and more accurate than anything the left brain conjures up. So much nonsense is couched in flowery inaccurate waffle that we tend to forget that plain simple speech is actually better.

Children are more observant, less judgemental, more trusting and less fixed in their ways, so altogether potentially better scientists than all those left brained scientists, for example. And potentially better hypnotherapists too!!

Invent surprises for yourself

Milton Erickson used the word 'surprise' a lot, always of course in the context of an agreeable future unknown.

Surprise parties or surprise presents or an outing to a surprise place. Surprises work well, which means you need someone who is able to give them to you!

When Erickson used surprises it achieved two things. Firstly it implied that he – Erickson – was capable of helping them obtain unstated nice things and secondly that by doing so he was no threat – he was a fairy godfather figure, a Father Christmas of the hypnotherapy world!

Hypnotic Realities – Milton Erickson

Or would you like to have it as a surprise?

Now or later?

Ooooooooooh now now now!!!!!

Surround yourself with beauty, art and music

In addition to doing, you can also take a passive approach

Look at lovely gentle non frightening pictures [go to an art gallery, fill your house full of gentle beautiful paintings].
Fill your house full of gentle inspiring music – not frantic music, not muzac, but really inspiring gentle music.
Read poetry
Buy books with loads of photos in – picture books. Often disparagingly called ‘coffee table books’ by those with high intellect and no spiritual input at all, they are perfect child pleasers.
Visit beautiful places - make sure you go regularly or live somewhere that is beautiful scenically – parks are OK, but a walk in the country is better.
Watch silly and funny TV programmes or films – not rude, not cruel, not sarcastic, just gentle stuff a child would love. Watch Bob the Builder or Postman Pat, anything on Cbeebies, small childrens’ programmes. Exciting but not frightening films or TV programmes [U certificate only]

I hope you get the idea.

How it works

It may be helpful here to refer to the Model of the Mind and to have read the generic description of How spiritual experience works

By loving and caring for the Subconscious as though it was a child and giving it time in your life , it becomes calm and at peace. And once it is calm and at peace, it will send no more messages to the Will wanting and complaining. There will be no high intensity Emotions, all will be still. And the Will will gradually lower its use of any input from the Intellect, letting the only activity be that of Creativity and imagination. And the Composer can take over.

If you indulge in the diversionary and creative activities I have suggested, you will also not be forced to use your Memory. You will be living – like a child – for the ‘now moment’ and thus the function of Reason will also be stilled.

As you can see, the overall effect is extraordinarily effective with just about every block to spiritual experience removed. Combine this with the Safe House and you are in a very good position to have invisible input – inspiration and wisdom, bliss and peace. This approach also helps a great deal with healing.

All you need to do to make the process complete is make sure you are fit and healthy so that your autonomic system and nervous system don’t get in the way, and use the techniques for reducing desires and obligations and you are more or less ‘there’.

Advantages

Free
Effective
Legal
The route to nirvana

Disadvantages

Can’t think of any.

References and further reading

Videos

Don Norman: 3 ways good design makes you happy - In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at design that makes people happy. He names the three emotional cues that a well-designed product must hit to succeed.

Books

The Design of Everyday Things, [revised and expanded edition] - 23 Dec 2013 by Donald A. Norman

Observations

Nietszche specifically advocated this approach, so all the observations related to him are a testimony to the approach. Aleister Crowley also advocated and used this approach. Every true artist, poet and musician on this site is in some respects a testimony to this technique and it would be silly to list them all. Confucius, and the writers of the I Ching recognised its value, many philosophers achieved their inspiration via this. So no list I provide is ‘complete’, there are too many to list. But here are a few more examples………….

WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

Navigation

Sub Navigation

Suppression

Beauty, art and music

Type

Introduction and description

Background